Category Archives: In Progress

A crown is one of those things that I suspect most metal workers idly think about as they wander through museums, looking at the metal work that has survived the centuries. There is a fascination with crowns, but it is one of those projects that one never really does.

A crown is mostly impractical, it’s really just a show piece. It’s a pretty significant commitment of materials and time, both of which are pretty closely guarded in the studios I know. Just what you do with it if you do make one? I figured that it was going to be one of those things that I idly daydreamed about as I sand my fingerprints off an almost finished piece. Sanding them off AGAIN, that is.

But artist dreams have a funny habit of materializing. Recently, I started working with a local theatre for a current production that requires not just some innovative costuming, but also a crown. As soon as I have permission and the proper links, I will include their information, but for now I can only record my journey as I build a real crown.

Like any good theatre, there is something different about the crown, but that is a reveal for a much later date.

With any commission, the process starts with getting ideas and images in front of the client and getting a basic idea in common. Then, build a paper mock up and have the client make changes.

Working towards the client’s vision. Not there yet.

Make those changes and build another stiff paper model. This really should not go on more than 3 times, but usually it will take three times to get to where you have the go ahead to cut some metal. Working in paper is really important for a few reasons; firstly that client can get a feel of the dimensional aspect of the piece and secondly, you will have a better idea of several of the challenges that are ahead. Things like how to join the elements, how much metal is needed, what tools you are going to need and any techniques that you will need to brush up on or just plain learn.

With some attention to spacing and height, this is the approved design.

Time to play with a little more paper and make pattern pieces. The model will have had variations and not be as clean as the pattern needs to be, so once more pull out the rulers, compasses, protractors, pencils, erasers and scissors.

The creased Crescents are a slightly different shape than the flat Crescents and so there are two patterns. Traced a cutting layout for economy of material.

I did a complete layout of the five Flat Crescents to find out how much metal I would need to texture. I will need to texture before cutting as the hammered texture for the Flat Crescents deform the metal and I would end up with a lot of clean up if I cut first.

I have a brass scribe that I use to mark copper sheet.

After using the brass scribe, I went over the line with a Sharpie marker for visibility.

Time to cut. I have two jeweler’s saws, one with a deep throat which means that I can cut far into metal, although I will still not be able to get this completely cut. I’ll need to think of a way to get more access to the middle of the sheet which is a foot wide.

My Jeweler’s Saw. Sawing along the center of the Sharpie Line.

I drew two dashes on the line; I can’t saw this part of the line from the edges of the sheet due to the angle of the lines. What to do?

Usually, I can drill a hole along the line at a place where the angle of sawing will not be impeded by the edge of the sheet metal. This bought me a little bit more access, but I still had an area that my saw just couldn’t reach.

Drilling a hole to feed the saw blade through will help me get a little bit of the job done, but this will still leave a bit to cut. The copper has been reflecting some of the things in the studio, mostly the wall, the work cubbies and the ceiling, but also my new phone.

Since what I am cutting is the metal to be textured, I will still need to cut five Crescents that will be creased. Laying out two of these in places that will give me more access room seems to be the solution. The copper sheet metal is 1 foot wide and 3 feet long, so cutting these two Crescents is going to be a lot of moving me and trying to balance the metal so that I don’t snap too many saw blades.

By removing the small bit under the right side of the paper Crescent, I can get access to the remaining bit to remove the Flat Crescent material.

And I was doing so well! Saw blades are very thin and break if you think about them funny. Or if you hold your mouth wrong while sawing.

A few notes on sawing. Paper templates are adhered to the metal with rubber cement in the WeaselWerks studio. Some people will use a scribe to mark out each shape directly on the metal, but I’m fond of the paper as I can write on it afterwards, which is sometimes necessary to remember which piece is which when doing fussy work. Sawing is done as close to the outside of the drawn line as possible. This can be a lot of turning, which can put tension and torque on the blade and snap it when you least expect it. This is why I buy saw blades by the gross.

I buy blades by the gross, because they are so fragile.

Hurrah!!!! The copper to be textured has been liberated! Coffee time!!! Then – Fire Time!!!!

Using the larger hand held propane torch, I’m annealing the copper to make it a little easier to texture.

There should be a charcoal brick under the copper, but as I have not been able to find a number of my tools, I am using the asbestos pad, but have propped it up so that it does not sit directly on the desk top. I could also use a trivet that I have for torch enameling, but it has not been located as of yet either. I hate moving the studio! Annealing the copper with a torch will bring the copper back to a more pliable state.

Copper will discolor during annealing, especially if there is any kind of oil or chemical on the metal. I usually leave a lot of oil and sweat on my metals, so sometimes the colors are rather interesting.

It’s hard to see here, since the copper is so reflective, but there is some oranges, reds, blues and greens that show up after the annealing. Unfortunately, these will all fade rather quickly, but they are pretty while they last.

This is in normal sunlight (the previous pictures were taken in the studio in rather dim light. I like to work in the dark.

In regular light, the colors show up a lot better. Some artists will wax and seal copper at this point to try to preserve the flame painting, but even so, the copper continues to oxidize and fade into browns. This metal is sitting on a small steel block and some foam padding, waiting for me to beat the crap out of it. My neighbors are about to realize that I’m not really that quiet after all.

Using a ball peen hammer, texturing the whole piece will take several hours and several trips back to the flame.

The round end of the ball peen hammer is used to mar the smooth surface of the copper. Every bit of the face of the metal gets hit, leaving a texture like the moon surface or scales, depending on whether you like to think about reptiles or not. The copper will gradually start to curve towards the steel of the hammer and this sheet will not be flat for very long. Additionally, the copper gets harder and harder as I hammer it, as well as brittle. It is possible to crack the copper if I don’t take it back and anneal it again.

A lot of texture here and the metal has been singing to me.

A couple of trips through the annealing and cooling process has let me texture most of the sheet. I’ve even hammered this mostly flat twice and it is still curving a lot. This property of curving towards the harder steel hammer head combined with the copper spreading when sturck is how copper, gold and silver are “raised” to form bowls and cups from a single flat sheet of metal. I need a flat sheet though, so I will anneal this again and flatten it out by using a rawhide hammer on the back of the metal. The very center needs to be textured, but I can cut two Crescents at this point, which will make the annealing and texturing of the middle a little bit easier.

A interesting thing happened while I was doing the last bit of texturing to get to the picture above; the metal started singing to me. As I was hammering it, there was actually a musical sound being produced instead of just a metallic ping. This has to do with the curve that was being formed and the vibration moving along that curve. You can hear the same sort of sound by gently striking the side of a metal bowl, but I was surprised that I was hearing it so early in the forming process.

I think I will need to raise a copper vessel sometime soon. Maybe that would be why I bought three square feet of copper at one time!

I did get a lot of sawing done as well as some filing and sanding work, but I will post about that in a day or two.

Five years ago (almost to the day in fact) the ‘Werks took on their biggest project ever.

We bought a condo that pretty much looked like crap. Ok, not just looked like, but was in actuality not habitable the first time we saw it.

We closed escrow on the sale of the condo to it’s new owners this week. Not only is it now livable, it is beautiful.

Weasels LOVE cherry wood and copper. Weasels don’t mind laying laminate flooring, but we don’t like installing crown molding and baseboards. In the future, we will farm that out to someone else.

There was a lot of flooring! There is this really nifty thing called a pull bar that helps a lot. Use a rubber faced mallet or hammer with it though, since it makes a ton of noise if you use a regular hammer with the pull bar. Our neighbors let us know that a regular hammer made a lot of noise, although we were pretty deaf at the time and that’s what we think they were telling us.

Ikea cabinets – yeah Ikea. But we built them. And hammered our thumbs in the process. There was a galley style kitchen before and 50,000 dead roaches when we bought it. Now there are new cabinets, new countertops, a new sink and built in cutting board as well as new floors and toekicks. Weasels hate installing toekicks. It involves crawling around on the floor and doing a lot of measuring that some how wasn’t right. Even when we measured three times.

The molding around the doors, the crown molding and the baseboards were all stained and varnished by hand by the head weasel. At times over the past couple of years, the head weasel has had a lot of stained fingernails, hands, arms, feet, legs and many face splotches. Also, varnish for wood acts like fingernail varnish on fingernails, but doesn’t look as good.

Remodeled Bathroom- White! White! Augh!!!!! Not a weasel friendly color, but our realtor reminded us that we were moving out and regular people like white. The bathroom job was not done by weasels, and probably should have been. It took 3 weeks to remodel the bath. At one point, all the weasels had been without showers for 8 days. Not happy weasels!!!!

Also a walk in closet. Painting closet rods seems like it would be a lot easier than it actually is. Paint gets every where. Hands, feet, arms, faces, backs. necks… everywhere! Also – wearing shoes while remodeling is probably a good idea. Hasn’t this been a topic before? Probably will be again.

There are three bedrooms in the condo, but we only took pictures of two. They all pretty much looked the same at the end. The carpet is actually a brown and black stripe that is very nifty. Weasels did baseboards and painting for the bedrooms which was baseboards too much, At least we know about baseboards now though.

So even though I actually talk about doing tiny metal, paper, fiber and other stuff on the blog most of the time, there has been a lot of time where I was lugging 10 gallon paint cans, buying unassembled cabinets and other stuff that was really heavy work. It’s been a long five years but we had six viewings in 48 hours and three offers at the end of those 48 hours. Every offer that came in was at or above our asking price and included comments regarding how beautiful the condo was.

As an artist, I wanted to do a good job, learn new skills (and I sure did!) and create something that people liked. I succeeded in all three areas, plus I got to experiment a little in preparation for our next big project.

What you can’t see is the inside of the doors that lead to the balcony and the courtyard. I painted these copper. All the hardware (cabinet pulls and door knobs) in the common areas are oiled rubbed bronze, which has a coppery color to it in actuality.

With the cherry wood colors and the copper highlights, this condo could easily take on a SteamPunk affect.

We are now looking for a duplex that we will remodel and then rent out. I anticipate (read plan) on doing a lot more cherry, copper and SteamPunk style detailing in these units including copper plate detailing on the cabinet doors and a copper countertop.

I will edit in the pictures of the condo from when we bought it, just to give an idea of what we started with as soon as I transfer them from the other laptop.

So that’s where the weasels have been lately. Now we are back to smaller work as soon as we can find our soldering station in one of the many moving boxes.

In spite of almost always being misspelled in program books when I do a show, visitors to my table usually laugh and read the name out loud from the banner. It’s nice to give people a smile even if that’s all they take away from my display. Actually, especially if that’s all I can give them.

No one ever asks – why weasels?

There’s a lot of reasons, really. I have the same coloring as several varieties of weasels (brown and tan), I tend to be unnoticed in public and the alliteration factor makes me happy.

Additionally, weasels work pretty hard in the wild. In the studio, we work pretty hard as well. It’s sometimes a very long day with not a whole lot to show at the end, sort of like spending all day collecting tiny seeds and hunting down your dinner. I imagine that sometimes even the smoothest weasel has moments of dismay when reviewing the day’s accomplishments.

Some of the work that an artist has to do in the current world of hyper connectivity has nothing to do with the art form itself. There’s a ton of pictures to take, to post to the web on various sites, descriptions to write and then blogs with tutorials or updates about your work need to be done. You need to have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, at least one online store front, keep up with your personal email, have a picture gallery on a site like deviantart and a blog. It’s pretty hard to balance the online work with the actual production.

It’s easy to spend half a day just doing the outreach and not even picking up a tool and some metal. That’s where werking like a weasel is really important.

Weasels spend their day doing the things they need to do to survive, but they take the time to be aware of their surroundings, explore the unusual and enjoy their favorite places. Watching a weasel scamper on it’s way, you’ll see them stop and check out some new blossoms, run through a stream a couple of times and search out some tasty snacks, all while digging out a nest, grooming, hunting and soaking up some rays.

It’s a great reminder that I can get some work done, then take a break and work on a blog post for ten minutes while I enjoy a cup of coffee.

Not everything has to be done start to finish every time without any breaks. At the end of the day, it’s important to have enjoyed the time I spent on the things I accomplished and on the things that aren’t quite done, but are further along than they were. There’s always tomorrow to stop in on the things that still need to be done, and the things that need to be enjoyed. Weasels werk every day, so they have to play every day too. Those flowers aren’t going to last forever so you need to find them while they are there.

Plus, those tasty snacks show up when you least expect them, so you’ve gotta keep an eye out for them.

Seems like there is never enough time in a day. Something has to be put off, and usually that’s taking pictures and online posting in the ‘Werks.

So, a quick update as to what’s been going on and what’s going to happen very soon:

1. ConDor Con in San Diego, March 21 – 23.

WeaselWerks is attending and will be hosting a table in the Dealer’s Room. There will be any number of things produced in the ‘Werks as well as some new landscapes from CalArt67. I think that the backgrounds that we did together are almost exhausted and we will be doing some more in June.

I looked around very carefully last year as I was out scurrying about and chose two artists that I will invite to do appearances with WeaselWerks all through 2014. These two artists make incredible art in very different areas than anything that we do in the ‘Werks, so it’s very much a sharing of inspiration and resources for all of us. Each of these artists spend a great deal of time crafting each piece and that means fewer pieces to display at shows and conventions. We know all about that frustration!

Natalie Ewert – working in pencil, ink, art marker, polymer clay, woodburning, watercolor pencil, watercolors and acrylics, she makes art you want to touch and hold. There is so much I want to say about how much I’m in awe, it’s best if you go visit her site(s) and save me the embarrassment of being a spaz. Which I totally am about her pieces and have to contain myself so as to not be annoying when I am around them. See what I’m talking about at http://www.creatornat.com/ and http://natamon.deviantart.com/.

Upon a Midnight – It’s leather, but not as we know it, Jim. Yes, it is leather; coiled, stretched, rolled, twisted leather in colors you never thought of leather in. Is that an eye? Again, yes! Or maybe a feather. A shell? Yes, yes and yes! Every item is unique, hand crafted and displayed with such amazing artistry, you just can’t compare the works from Upon a Midnight with the multi-run offerings that one usually sees at events. Upon a Midnight was invited to show at ConDor Con with WeaselWerks as I felt that more people need to see work that is truly extraordinary. Visit the website and view the galleries to see just why I’m so blown away at http://uponamidnight.com/welcome.html and https://www.etsy.com/shop/UponaMidnight.

Deeply Dapper: Better Living through Tentacles – Because better living through tentacles is what some days are all about! Located in the eastern part of our confederation, Deeply Dapper creates soaps that make me want to get dirty just to take a bath. Seriously, the ‘Werks has a bathroom best seen by candlelight and tentacles would seriously class the place up, so getting me to WANT to spend time there is a miracle. Even with plans to move closer to the rockin’ and rollin’ West Coast (there have been 3 earthquakes in the LA area in the last two weeks!), I loved the product descriptions, the scent blends and the idea so much that I contacted them about having their soaps for events. It’s been a great experience with Deeply Dapper so far and morning showers with coffee scented soap just rock the Weasel World! Visit the booth at ConDor Con to see and sniff or check out their websites if you have to stay home that weekend. http://deeplydapper.storenvy.com/ Also, read the blog at Deeply Dapper!

CalArt67 – as the sole rep for CalArt67, the ‘Werks will have the new landscapes on display at ConDor Con, but it will be an opportunity to order prints for mail delivery after convention for the most part. Here’s a sneak peek at two of the new ones:

As to what’s been happening the ‘Werks on the bench, I’ll close out with one lesson learned and a picture.

Lesson learned – getting a cut from Brass seems to be more prone to infection than Copper cuts. Maybe there is some truth behind the idea that Copper has antibacterial properties. Remember – Safety First! Sometimes that means band-aids and Neosporin.

If you haven’t noticed yet that Sarcasm is also an artform practiced here in the ‘Werks, you’ve been missing an essential part of what makes a Weasel work.

I often comment wryly about Safety in the workshop, mostly that I have a random relationship with safety precautions when it comes to me. However, when it comes to the safety of others, property and myself in a group workshop setting, I’m extremely pro safety.

Case in point:

I was attending one of the larger bead shows in the Southern California area and attended two classes, both of which would involve the use of torches. I was not too worried since this particular show has been running for several years and I figured that they had a good control on the safety requirements from the hotel and the local fire department, not to mention their insurance carrier.

I also took a quick look at the teachers individual background on their personal websites. Both presented themselves as experienced metal workers, one even is a graduate of the Revere Academy in San Francisco, so my concerns were almost vanquished. Almost.

The first class was a disaster! During the safety part of the class, the teacher told us we were responsible for the THREE FEET all around us when using a lit torch. Mind you, I feel that the range of caution should be FIVE feet as I’m nervous about other people’s skill level until I can observe them in action. But, it was her class, so I go along.

Remember – we are told THREE FEET. I look to my right and left and approximate that the student on either side of me is SIX INCHES away from me.
This translates to 5 people within my three foot responsibility zone. The odds are not good so far and get worse when neither student next to me has experience using a mini torch, or any torch at all. Additionally, the student on my right announces they have had a recent brain surgery and can’t follow directions as well as they could before. I’m now exhibiting less weasel traits and more ‘deer in the headlights’ traits. But I go along.

During the next three hours, hot metal fell off stands, bounced off my leg twice from my neighbor on my left’s work area and my neighbor on my right knocked everything over, caught the table on fire, burned the carpet and couldn’t figure out how to turn her torch off. Oh, and we completed less than 1/4 of the project. In three hours.

I fled the classroom as soon as our time was up. Seriously – I was packed up and out the door within 45 seconds of the end of class. The table was still smoldering so I don’t think anyone noticed my haste or departure.

After a night of cocoa and calming down, I went to the second class. I was encouraged to see that the student to teacher ratio was much more reasonable and that the torch was well away from the class table. I thought I was in the clear.

Wrongo Bongo, Roscoe Bosco.

In the next hour, not only did we reinforced my bias against using scissors to cut metal (warpage of your piece, cuts on hands when turning corners, metal shards flying through the air, and so on) but I also saw a torch used in a manner that I hope never to see again.

When it came time to anneal the copper we were hammering the snot out of, the teacher called in her assistant to help with the torch. I thought that was odd, but eh, whatever. Maybe I was going to learn something innovative. Weasels are curious; I went along with it.

OH GODS – NO!!!!!

As the assistant held the lit tank torch, the teacher held the metal piece to be annealed with a pair of copper tongs. She held the copper tongs in her bare hand. She then held the tongs and copper piece in the flame that her assistant was holding. To anneal. To bring that hammered copper to a dull red glow. In copper tongs. With a bare hand.

Using a torch to heat copper scrap to an annealed state. It’s a dull red glow.

Past the annealing stage, I’m melting this scrap into a ball. It’s bright yellow at this point.

To top it off, the quenching bowl was TEN FEET AWAY!

This is the maximum ideal distance this weasel thinks a quenching bowl should be from the torch area. One inch.

I haven’t been so disturbed in over a decade and I read a lot of horror novels. Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro need to take metal working classes at a convention. I’m just saying.

To put the icing on the cake, the two of them were working over a perfectly white asbestos pad that had a pristine charcoal fire block sitting square on it. Irony. Even my cat gets it.

I went and got the quenching bowl and brought it over to the torch area and another student gave an oven glove to the teacher who was insisting on holding those copper tongs in the freaking flame. She did this not once, but every time we needed to anneal something. Six times that I was present for. Holding hot copper tongs in a flame. My inner weasel was screaming “Darwin, where are you?!?!?”

By the end of an hour, I was done with as much as I could do to my project without annealing it again, since I was not going to be part of that train wreck, and even with another hour of class, I left. Mostly because what was covered was dapping and stamping, whereas the class I paid for was repousse. The teacher was passing the dapping off as respousse. She was unhappy and confused as to why I was working the front of my piece again after having domed it. That was when I knew that she really, truly believed that she was doing repousse and that I should just slink off without further discussion.

So…… what I can take away from this fiasco and pass on to you, citizen, is as follows:

2. When researching a teacher online, pay less attention to the printed words and more attention to the picture examples of their work. It might not be their work, but a picture is less likely to deceive you as to what was actually done. Who did it is still a matter for speculation.

3. If you see a situation that you think in unsafe, trust your reaction. Lawsuits might be fun for some (mostly lawyers), but I’d rather be forging in the studio than sitting in a courtroom trying to get compensation for pain and suffering.

4. Taking the very basic, entry level classes at conventions can be rewarding. Taking advanced classes at conventions – usually not so much. Take advanced classes from local artists, community colleges, teaching studios or the fabulous Art and Craft schools that are a great mini vacation to boot.

5. Use your tools. They look pretty when you first unpack them, but for the most part metal working tools are scarred, nicked, dinged and discolored when used properly. The exception to the rule is your chasing hammers. You should be able to use the hammer face as a mirror to see if your hair is pulled back.

Because I USE them. Pretty tools = never been used.

As to the safety level in the ‘Werks, I learned a bad lesson. I now feel that I’m safer in my studio even though I’m still not wearing shoes most of the time, not always opening windows when I should (baby, it’s COLD outside) and have a huge mess on my tables. My Optivisor hangs on its peg most of the time and there is going to be a paper landslide off the top of the filing cabinet someday. It is really time to reorganize, but there is one more thing I want to finish before I clean. Maybe two things. Ok, ok, just three…

Much like a hoopy frood, this weasel always knows where their Optivisor is – hanging up.

On the injury scoreboard, I must report that there has been a Weasel injury this week. As I was washing dishes, I sliced my thumb on the bread knife that was hiding in the sink suds. Pretty deep, but not enough to require stitches.

Of course, I was barefoot, still in my pajamas, hair not tied back and headphones blasting away. Situation normal for the kitchen.

Because really, what could go wrong?

What I managed to get done before I had a dish washing related injury.

One of the best parts of being creative is that you can be as wacky and weird as you want and pass it off as being “Artistic”. You can also put off doing things like taking out the trash or getting to the dry cleaners before it closes since you were “In the Zone” and when you get caught watching totally unredeemable movies (Hell comes to Frogtown anyone?) you are either searching for inspiration or doing research.

It’s a little different once you’ve produced a piece and it’s wacky, weird, odd or based on the smallest detail from that one episode of Battlestar Galactica {and I mean the original series) where Starbuck and Apollo go down to this planet….. well, you get the drift.

BUT –

If you share the story that was going on in your head about this unique piece as you were laboring away, the listener is treated to more than just an appreciation of diligent craftsmanship; they get something special that is lacking from many of the objects that surround us. They get a little bit of magic, a little glimpse into a different world that other people don’t know about. Sort of a secret that only a few will ever share. It’s the kind of thing that many of us dreamt of as kids and as an artist, you get to create it. It’s awesome!

As I’m starting to prepare for my next public appearance with WeaselWerks, I’m thinking about all things Steampunk. WeaselWerks will be appearing at CondorCon in San Diego in March. Gail Carriger, authoress of the Parasol Protectorate novels as well as other fine literary works, has been announced as the Guest of Honor for the convention and I’m really looking forward to being able to say hello, just like all the myriad other fans.

If you are wondering, Weasel – what does this have to do with the title of your post?, I’m a getting there, just hang on to yer horses.

One of the characters from Ms. Carriger’s novels, a certain Ivy Hisslepenny, has the most unorthodox taste in hats. Ivy, it seems, has never meet an ugly hat. Other characters seem to take almost palpable damage from some of her haberdashery choices, which has always given me pause for thought. What history could a horrid hat harbor, if a hat could harbor horrid history?

I’ve collected some materials that are rather outlandish, put on my thinking cap and have started to produce a series of head wear that will be on display at my table at the convention. The collection will be titled “The Consequence of the Unfortunate Hat” and each piece of headgear will have it’s own short, tragic story.

I will put each one up on the blog here, along with it’s story, for those who will not be able to view these cautionary caps in person.

In the meantime, the ‘werks continues to work on new designs, both steampunky and not, for the New Year.

All the best from the ‘Werks!

UPDATE: Due to a number of unfortunate occurrences, I have not been able to get more than one hat done.. Additionally, there will not be room to display the hats as WeaselWerks will be quite full with diverse and sundry merch. I’ll back burner this idea for next year and send the completed hats as part of an art show at one of the southland Steampunk conventions.

Seems like that’s all I’ve seen this week, though I know that I also was working with some interesting beads and working on cutting an Amethyst cabochon.

For the last show of the year, I’m working on stock starting from both ends of the price spectrum. The expensive things take a lot more thought, which I do while I’m making 20 or so wire elements for more reasonably priced items.

One of the wire projects is a butterfly design that I came up with a year or two ago. The design has been kicking around in my brains, so I decided to do as much with that little butterfly as I could.

Butterfly

Each Butterfly needs two pieces of wire for the wings. I clean up each wire end before shaping a wing and then I anneal the wire.

Annealing make the wire soft again and I need it to be quite soft as I’m going to hammer it flat and then texture it.

If I had a hammer… and I do!!!

Once it’s all textured (and I have hammered my thumbs a couple of times) its time to put these two wings together. To the solder station!

Yumm!! Extra crispy.

We’re looking ugly now.

Depending on what I’m going to do with the butterfly, I might leave them dirty and continue working on them (sometimes having a dark base is a good thing), but these need to be shiny. Into to the pickle pot for a bath.

Better. But still not very appealing.

Got to clean these up and form them into a nice butterfly shape. This means sanding. I spend a lot of time sanding, which turns my fingers odd colors and I often sand off part of fingernails.

Copper butterflies on velvet.

So much better! To keep these a bright copper color longer, they got sealed with an acrylic. Copper will oxidize, even when sealed, over time, so this really only postpones the inevitable. Still, even as these age, they will be pretty.